“But are you sure that these slanting walls and their sloping columns have always been awry like this?” we ask.
“Yes,” reply the archæologists and the architects who have visited Sar during the nineteenth century, including such authorities as Lopez Ferreiro and Fernandez Sanchez. “For seven and a half centuries this building has stood thus. Thirty generations of men have come to gaze at it, and we still marvel at the temerity of the man who designed it. If,” they say, “this had all been the effect of sinking ground and not the result of calculation, how could the church have remained thus intact? Would it not in that case have fallen in ruins long ago?”
The arches outside prove nothing, for they do not date farther back than the middle of the seventeenth century. If this leaning had been the result of sinking foundations, the vaulting would have cracked, and the pillars would have been broken to pieces. But the present Gothic vaulting is not so old as the walls; it was added in 1485-1504, when Gomez Gonzalez was its prior, as the inscription and coat of arms near the keystone of the arch next to the Capilla Mayor testify. Is it likely that any architect would have added such vaulting had the walls really been falling? Besides, in none of the manuscripts preserved for so many centuries in the archives of the Colegiata is there any mention of this extraordinary inclination nor of any catastrophe connected with it. This silence favours the belief that the whole thing is intentional, and a feat of architectural skill. Then, too, if the sinking had been accidental, the inclination of the walls and pillars would have been inwards, not, as is the case, outwards. So much for the accepted theory.
The word “bandy-legged” is not, admittedly, an architectural term, yet it is the most appropriate epithet I can find to bring before my readers the peculiar inward inclination of the piers and walls of this church. The man who fetched the keys and showed me round may have been an ignorant fellow, but he at least saw no mystery about the structure of his parish church: he pointed out to me that the river Sar not only ran very close to the edifice, but filtered into the ground beneath it. The wooden floor which I beheld was six feet higher than the original floor; it had been raised on account of the water, and completely hid the bases of the piers. Had the whole depth of the pillars been visible, their inclination, or, rather, the bow in their legs, would have been much more striking even than it is at present. “The foundations could be drained,” said the man, “but it would cost lots of money”; and so saying, he opened a trap door in the central nave and let me look down. It was like the dungeon floor in the Doge’s Palace at Venice. “You see, with all that water, it’s quite natural that the building should get shunted a bit,” he continued.
I discussed all this on my return with one of the local archæologists of a younger generation than those I have quoted. “I have seen,” said he, “documents preserved in the archives of the Colegiata which speak of the falling-in of the original roof, and of its being replaced by the present one. For eight years I too believed this church to be an architectural marvel. I imbibed with enthusiasm all the odd ideas about it, but after a time my enthusiasm began to cool and my certainty to waver, and then, after a long and gradual process, my mind became free of all belief about the matter, and was at last able to think for itself. I thought, and thought, and thought, till at length I determined to go and make a fresh and careful examination of the whole church stone for stone, and I reasoned thus: ‘If it was originally intended that the walls and pillars should slant as they do now, surely the blocks of stone would have been made to slant too; but if, on the contrary, it was intended to stand straight in the ordinary way, the blocks of stone would not have been made to slant.’ I then examined the stones, and finding that there was not the least suspicion of a slant in any of them, came to the conclusion that the inclination of the church must have taken place since its construction, and must be due to natural causes. Then, too, the fact that the original roof fell in, indicated some bulging; and I finally came to the conclusion arrived at by your guide, that the water underneath might account for a great deal.”
Every architect who visits Santiago, every engineer hurries out to see the Colegiata de Sar, thinking that he perhaps might be able to solve the mystery. Foreign admirals, when they bring their fleets to the neighbouring harbour of Villagarcia, hasten to pay a visit to Sar, not because they have a predilection for old churches, but because they have heard tell of its extraordinary architectural peculiarity.
This Colegiata was founded by Muñio, Bishop of Mondoñedo, one of the authors of the Historia Compostelana, who in his old age wished to retire with a few aged companions (canons of the cathedral) to some peaceful spot where he might end his days in prayer and meditation. He built a church and hermitages for himself and his companions, and lived there quietly for some years; then, when he felt death approaching, he handed the whole property over to Archbishop Gelmirez, that it might be made into an Augustine monastery. The whole story may be read in the ancient documents still preserved. The letter signed by Diego Gelmirez on September 1, Era 1174 (1137), and confirmed by Alfonso VII., is one of the most interesting of the diplomatic documents contained in the rich archives of the monastery. When in 1235, a century later, Archbishop Bernard renounced his mitre, he retired to end his days in the monastery of Sar, where his roughly hewn sarcophagus and his recumbent stone statue are still to be seen; the traveller will find it by the wall between the right apse and the door of the sacristy. The statue has a long beard,[176] which is rather unusual, a mitre, a long staff decorated with scallop-shells, with a tau handle. In 1711 this sarcophagus was opened by order of Archbishop Monroy, and the body was found well preserved and the garment on it in good condition, according to Zepedano, whom Villa-Amil quotes as a reliable authority. On the outer side of the sarcophagus are carved the following leonine verses, in two lines, one above the other:—
“Transit ab hoc vita Bernaldus Metropolita
Post hoc vile solum scandire posse polum.”[177]
Bernard died on November 20, 1240, as we learn from an inscription in five lines on the head of the sarcophagus (the date of the era is given). Such was the odour of sanctity in which he died that when the sarcophagus was opened several of his teeth were extracted as relics, also part of his staff and some fragments of his dress. Villa-Amil has carefully examined these last and compared them with others of the same epoch preserved in the Cluny Museum. He concludes that the material of one of St. Bernard’s garments was Moorish in design and texture.
At the other end of the church is another granite tomb, that of Don Gomez Gonzalez, the prior in whose day the greater part of the present vaulting was added. The body of his successor and cousin, Jacome Alvarez, lies between two of the columns that support the eastern vaults, in a sarcophagus which Alvarez had prepared for himself during his lifetime and mentioned in his will. Sanchez gives the whole clause in his description of the Colegiata. There are also many interesting inscriptions on the old pavement stones of the aisles, now mostly covered with water.